by Jean Johnson
How to Date a Superhero
by
Jean Johnson
“Man, that was a great movie! Thank you again for inviting me this afternoon.” Silver-gloved hands cut sharply through the air, wielded by blue-clad arms. “I didn’t think an Ascendant could’ve survived that big an explosion at the end, let alone a normal citizen, but the way he did it... brilliant! Movie magic at its finest.”
Red-and-silver limbs wrapped around the nearest blue arm, hanging — literally - on his every word. A female voice cooed, “Oh, I don’t know; I think you’d have come out of it without a scratch.”
The man’s tanned mouth curved up in a wry smile below his blue-and-silver mask. “I may be a working Ascendant, a living, breathing superhero . . . but I’m no stunt-double. Those guys are tough. Besides, even if I did survive, the conflagration would’ve burned up my costume. I wouldn’t be able to show my face afterwards, for fear of being recognized!”
“Believe me, if your costume burned off. . . who said we’d be looking at your face?” Laughter accompanied her words, as did the hint of a blush. Across the table, a body in orange-and-silver snorted with amusement, while the others around the briefing table smiled.
Carrie tried not to be sullen, but it was very difficult. She crossed her spandex-covered arms more tightly across her violet-and-silver chest. The only good thing about the rest of her night was that she wouldn’t have to see the two lovebirds seated to her left interacting any more.
The door to the briefing room hissed open, giving her a respite from the flirting happening next to her. Sitting up a little more in her seat, showing respect for the silver-and-white uniform that had entered the room, she settled her mind firmly into her working persona.
It was time to stop being Carrie Vinson, part-time pottery artist, and time to start being Foresight, Ascendant superhero -defender of justice, peace and the citizens of Belle View City. Not everyone was born with the genetic potential to become an Ascendant. Not everyone who was born with the genes actually made the transition from normal to super. But whatever it was that turned a normal person into a real, live, spandex-outfitted superhero, she had it.
It also meant she had the responsibility — along with the seven other people in the briefing room — to use her abilities to protect and defend her fellow citizens from any number of extraordinary dangers. Sometimes it was an earthquake or a building fire; sometimes it was a bank robbery or a toxic chemical spill. Sometimes they had to fight a Rescindant: a former fellow Ascendant who had turned evil.
But nowhere in the Ascendant League’s Manual of Conduct did it say she was allowed to wallow in sullen jealousy over the close camaraderie of two of her fellow teammates. Rather the opposite (even if fits of sullen jealousy weren’t mentioned specifically). So she straightened up, pulled her mind into work mode, and gave her boss, Oversight, an attentive look. The fact that her arms were still jealously folded over the purple-and-silver plastron of her superhero suit was immaterial.
“Good afternoon, Ascendants,” their supervisor greeted them. He started separating the stapled printouts stacked in his arms, handing them out to each of the team members. “I hope you all got a good night’s rest, because it’s Friday night, and the weekends are usually busy. League surveillance suggests that Rescindants Dr Mockery and the Pincushion might also be looking forward to this weekend. The Mayor’s Educators’ Ball is tomorrow night. I hope you got your ball gown and tuxedo dry-cleaned this last week, Foresight, Steelhand.”
Carrie groaned. “Not again! We covered the Charity Ball last weekend. Why do we have to do it again?”
Oversight smirked. “Because both of you can do a decent foxtrot. Bomber never learned, Backhand is too big to blend into the crowd and Hindsight is even more touch-sensitive than Steelhand. And, as far as I know, the other ladies never even learned.”
“Actually, that’s not true,” Farshot, a.k.a. Valerie Romano, interjected, her brown eyes flicking flirtatiously towards Steel-hand. “I can do a passable foxtrot, and even a waltz or two.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for the next society ball,” Oversight said. He gestured at the printouts he had passed around. “Let’s focus on tonight’s assignments, shall we? Farshot, Bomber, we need you to focus on the Eastside; rumour has it the Pincushion’s minions have been nosing around the edge of town, somewhere between the industrial sector and the suburbs. It’s an unconfirmed rumour, but it’s all we have to go on right now. Nearsight, we still haven’t found any concrete evidence of a Quad crime syndicate link to the Pearson Shipping Company on our end of things. You’ll have to continue your undercover work a bit longer.
“Backhand . . .” Oversight paused, sighed heavily, and pinned the burly, black-clad Ascendant with a disappointed look. “You’re lucky we’re still short on replacement staff, because I’d put you on probation if I could. Next time you get into a street fight with a Rescindant, don’t throw a car at them. There was a perfectly good - and considerably cheaper -street lamp you could’ve torn off and used. As it is, your wages are being garnished for the cost of the repairs to the citizen’s SUV.”
“Citizen?” Backhand protested, visibly affronted by the word. “He was one of Dr Mockery’s minions! He was trying to get into his car and escape with the isotope last week. Just because I was efficient at ruining his escape method and in thwarting the Doctor from setting off his viral bomb . . . !”
“We have no concrete evidence that he was indeed a minion, so there’s no way for the League to consider him anything but an innocent bystander.” Oversight planted his silver-gloved palms on the table, facing down the younger man. “You have a very bad habit of overusing your super-strength, Backhand.”
Backhand grumbled, folding his arms across his chest.
Oversight swept his gaze over the other young men and women in the briefing room. “The Police Forensics and Public Justice Departments have requested once again that Hindsight visit their evidence lockers to do a scan of all items picked up during the week.”
“Once again, I’m stuck with the most boring, horrific job on the planet. Please tell me they didn’t pick up any bloody murder-scene weapons this week?” Hindsight, team healer and touch-sensitive clairvoyant, muttered ruefully.
“Sorry. The City Morgue has an unidentified piece of human bone they want scanned,” Oversight told him.
“At least you get hazardous duty pay,” Backhand grumbled.
Oversight continued. “Foresight and Steelhand, obviously you’re on Westside patrol. The League also wants you to stop by the ballpark tonight. The Belle View Batters are playing the Star City Novas. Don’t disrupt the game - the Batters have a chance of getting into the division championship. Don’t enter the stands; just do a couple of circuits of the concourses, meet and greet the citizens shortly after the game starts, then get on with your patrol.”
Steelhand’s blue-masked face twisted. “Ugh . . . photo-ops. Do I have to?”
Oversight sighed.
Steelhand wrinkled his lip. “Little kids are always trying to touch my mask. Why can’t Backhand do it? Or Bomber?”
“Because you’re partnered with Foresight, and because the two of you are very photogenic together.”
Carrie heard Valerie’s obvious sigh of disappointment.
Photogenic, sure . . . but not together, Carrie lamented. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Valerie’s silver hand slide under the table to sympathetically squeeze Steelhand’s blue thigh. She was all over him. It made Carrie sick. She sighed heavily. Then a thought occurred to her. “Oversight... uh ... why don’t Farshot and I switch partners?”
“Because you’re still mentoring Steelhand,” her supervisor returned dryly.
“But
it’s been a month,” she protested. “Surely he’s got the hang of the city by now. At least enough to be switched to a new partner?”
“You don’t want to be my partner any more?” Steelhand peered at her.
The disappointment in his voice made her want to squirm. Carrie didn’t know how to answer without delving into her very personal problems to do with him; in specific, her problem with his lack of interest in her.
Tightening her arms across her chest, she shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m just saying . . . you know . . . you don’t have to serve out the rest of your probation period with me. That’s all.”
Oversight studied her. “Foresight, do you have a problem with Steelhand? Is there something we should know, since you’re his mentor?”
“What? No!” she quickly protested. Lies were firmly and officially discouraged among League members. As Steelhand’s team mentor during his settling-in period, if her team supervisor asked her for an evaluation, she had to give an honest one. “Officially, as his mentor, I’m saying that he’s smart, he’s competent, he’s good at the job and he’s ethical as well as efficient. Overall, he’s a great asset to the team. I’m just saying . . . that . . . you know . . . he’s good enough. He could be paired with someone else ... so why not pair him with someone else?”
From the way the others stared at her, she didn’t think they were buying it.
“Foresight, did you foresee something?” the green-masked Hindsight asked her.
“Or is it ... a personality conflict?” Farshot/Valerie asked. It didn’t help that the corner of her mouth curled up below the edge of her mask. It wasn’t a big smirk, but it was definitely a smirk. Valerie knew damned well that Carrie was interested in Steelhand . . . and that he hadn’t shown the slightest interest in return.
“It is not a personality conflict,” Carrie stated crisply, losing her temper at the other woman. “Not with his personality. If anything, I’m tired of your constant innuendos, your monopolizations of his time and energy and attention outside of actual fieldwork. I don’t even get any time during briefings and debriefings to discuss cases with him - you’re always there! You know what? You want him? Have him. Then maybe we can all get on with our work without further wasted time or effort.
“Just remember to do it where I don’t have to see or hear it. And use protection — you’ll have to retire if you get pregnant,” she added tartly. “Normally your fieldwork is excellent, Farshot. I’d appreciate it if you stopped acting like a cat on heat!”
Shocked silence greeted her words. Carrie could feel her skin heating from forehead to chin. Farshot looked almost as red as her costume.
Oversight tightened his mouth for a moment, then let out a heavy breath. “Foresight, kindly leave your personal speculations out of the office environment. Please turn your attention to the future, the immediate future. Let’s get started. What activities of importance will happen in the next twelve hours?”
Embarrassed, she set aside her feelings quickly and got to work. She unfocused her eyes, turning her attention inwards, then outwards again, in that strange mental flip that accessed her powers. She probed at the future. “Eastside ... I see ... a red gas pipe and valve wheel. Nothing about it seems to be important, but one of us will encounter it within an hour or so. After that . . . flashes of light . . . through a dirty set of windows . . . factory windows. Somewhere in the industrial centre. Workers . . . uh, 12th and . . . Olive Street? Oliver? Oldive? I’m not getting an impression of anything violent in the next five hours, just that you’ll want to do some surveillance on the workers in the factory. And something about the gas valve.”
“Maybe it’s a potential gas leak?” Bomber offered.
Carrie turned her attention to the next sector. “Riverside . . . I see violence. Someone getting beaten up badly. Nearsight. . . you’re there. You’re watching.”
“Can she interfere?” Oversight asked her. “Stop it somehow?”
Her ability to foresee alternate pathways took a lot of energy. Straining against the future, she examined that possibility. “No . . . No, it would ruin her current undercover work. The person . . . Pier 17, around ten thirty, eleven at night, I think. They’re going to toss him off the dock. He’s a citizen; he’s hurt, he’s weighted and he’ll drown. But if Backhand saves him ... he might turn and talk, maybe even stand witness against the syndicate.”
“Probability?” Oversight asked.
Carrie shook her head. “I’d say . . . maybe 40 per cent. Can’t guarantee anything; that’s further ahead than I can foresee.”
“We know. Nearsight,” Oversight addressed the yellow-clothed female next to him, “if you can bring yourself to do a little participating in roughing up this fellow: curse him, kick him, whatever — nothing too harmful - it might strengthen your cover. Right, Foresight?”
Carrie nodded in confirmation. “It’ll help, at least a little bit.”
Oversight nodded to Carrie. “Do you see anything else?”
She shook her head, eyes still unfocused. The moment she turned her attention to the other side of town, however, she was struck by an immediate vision. Steelhand was planning on getting into a fight with her.
Grimacing, she shook it off, blinked and refocused her attention again, looking further ahead. Just because she could foresee the future didn’t always make it a good idea to probe too deeply. At the moment, she really didn’t want to sort through the argument she’d soon be having with her partner, not when she was still working.
“Uh ... I see a random mugging ... a stand-by call from the Fire Department that comes to nothing . . . Baseball game - we show up in the third inning, stay ‘til the end of the fourth ...”
“Who’s up at the end of the fourth? I got a bet going with Stonewall from morning shift on the Batters beating the Novas tonight,” Backhand joked.
Bomber reached over and whacked him on the back of the head. “You know she won’t tell us. Now why didn’t you let me in on this bet, huh?”
“Because you still owe me twenty bucks from the last one you lost?”
“Gentlemen ... let the lady continue. What about after you leave the game?” their boss asked.
Carrie drifted into the future. She could see herself and Steelhand leaving the game. As with all her visions, she experienced a feeling of being both inside herself and seeing herself from the outside. She almost never got flashes of what her future self was thinking. This was no exception; all she could feel was how tense both she and her partner seemed.
“Steelhand and I get on our hover bikes, we ride off . . . we ... get hit by some sort of ... powder bomb?” Blinking, Carrie tried to focus on the details. The perpetrators were elusive. She shook her head. “Too many variables to foresee who did it. Just two figures. But we’re dusted in some sort of powder.”
“Skip ahead to the powder’s effects. Is it a poison? Some sort of drug? A tracing agent?” Oversight prodded her. “Is there a good reason to avoid getting hit?”
She continued. “We’re . . . We’re . . .”
What the hell?
“... we’re showering in a rooftop garden somewhere. Hosing each other down.”
Someone snickered, but with her attention turned inwards, Carrie didn’t see who it was. She did hear a thump as that person was whapped, however.
“Uh . . . OK . . . now we’re changing costumes, and changing locations. A more thorough shower in one of the hiding holes . . . now we’re in civilians, it looks like we’re changing locations again ...”
She blinked, coming back to herself. A quick glance to her left saw Steelhand giving her a puzzled frown.
He’s not at all interested to know what I look like outside of the anonymity of my costume. He will never even let me see his face. Sour grapes settled in her stomach.
Sure, he’ll go to the movies as a civilian with her, but he can’t stand going out in public with me. Today is just getting better and better.
“It sounds like a tracking powder then,”
Hindsight offered.
“We don’t know that yet,” Oversight cautioned him. “It could be some other sort of contaminant. It also sounds like a sensible precaution to put some distance between themselves and that powder, to limit any continuing contamination.”
“I can try skipping ahead a bit more,” Carrie offered, returning her attention to her power. “It’ll tire me out faster, but ... Wha—”
“What? What do you see?” Oversight demanded as her eyes widened in unfocused shock. “Foresight?”
She couldn’t speak. What she saw was beyond her comprehension, beyond her belief. But . . . there was no mistaking what would happen, if none of them greatly changed the course of their plans for the evening. At some point, after relocating to yet another safe house, some point during the night - she and Steelhand would be ... they would be ...
Naked. Together. Bare hands roaming, naked limbs entwining, hungry mouths mating, supple hips flexing. That level of naked. Together.
She watched herself, as herself- as Carrie, not as Foresight — and him as ... whatever his real name was, but not as the Ascendant hero, Steelhand. She watched him cradle her head in his palms, watched as he undulated over her in slow, strong strokes, watched their lips suckling and parting in devouring, deep—
Something hit her, jolting her out of her vision. Heart pounding, she blinked to clear her focus and realized someone had thrown a crumpled paper ball at her face. The rumpled sheet had landed on her purple-covered lap. Given the sardonic look of enquiry from the orange-clad hero opposite her, Bomber was the culprit.
“What did you see?” Oversight repeated.
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
“Was it something horrible?” Nearsight asked her. “It looked like something horrible.”
“Or at least something shocking,” Farshot added.
“Is it something we should try to avoid?” Steelhand asked her.
The concern in his voice pricked her out of her shock. Blinking again, Carrie cleared her throat. “Uh . . . I’m . . . not sure. It was such a strong vision.”
